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If you make it just a bit further into Tomb of Giants and meet Patch and fall for his trick, there's a skull lantern down there that makes the area much easier (same as the Dusk of Oolacile spell, which I couldn't use as I had no intelligence/magic). Make sure and pick it up quick though as there are some lethal enemies down there.

I got the Light Spell from Oolacile but decided to go to Demon Ruins instead with 500 arrows, following Li-ion's advise.

I had a hard time with the Firesage Demon until I remembered to use the Bandit's Knife. I killed him in 30 seconds with that weapon. Next, Centipede Demon. I summoned Solaire and a Phantom without knowing what was expecting me after the fog wall. The lava intimidated me so much that I left the fight to my friends and fired magic whenever I could. Boss dead. First try.

And now to the living hell of Lost Iziliathaever (I'll never get that name right).

I killed, I don't know, fifteen dinossaurs or something to get to the towers. I then entered the Angkor Wat look-alike area (strange mixture of architectural styles in the Dark Souls world) , killed the various rotating fire spitter statues, until a sage with fire powers did his best to kill me with a circus worthy fire show. He almost did, but what frustrated me immensely, and eventually killed me, was the simultaneous invasion from an NPC who got me completely off-guard and nailed me to the ground.

Alright, second try -- "oh, good, the annoying dinosaurs are still dead. So, I just have to run through the entire lava area. This is basically a swamp with poison, pretty easy then, I just wish those japanese artists had minimized the amount of orange paint here. My eyes would thank them. I'll just run through the statues here and since I'm not human with no chance of invasion I'll just kill the circus freak with magic. Wow, large fog wall. Boss should be in here. Where is the bonfire? Lets see, ha!, a big area filled with statues. I smell bonfire. Yummy, a big empty room with loot (floor collapses). WTF? Where am I? Let me see what's down here: 5 annoying tentacle things. Arrows! All dead. I'll just jump now. Oh, it's a swamp. I'll just alternate between flasks and poison healing herbs. I'm out of flasks, where's the fucking exit? I don't want to die in here. I'll just use humanities to restore HP. (10 humanities after) WHERE IS THE FUCKING EXIT?

I wonder is it the guy on the church altar? Some people in the original playthrough didn't even see him, I believe. Maybe for those people he has returned in NG+?

He was similar to the guy at the altar, but with a different weapon if I'm not mistaken. I also found two undead soldiers at the bonfire next to the male undead merchant to be red phantom-ish. They soak up much more damage and also deal much more than the regular dreglings in that area.

That all only started after defeating the gargoyles. Talking about defeating: I'm back in Anor Londo on my NG+, just finished the Iron Golem. But I skipped quite some areas and so far ignored the Capra Demon and the Gaping Dragon. Instead I went straight to Quelaagh, joined the Daughters of Chaos for more pyromancies and went quickly through Sen's Fortress to show the Iron Golem my new pyromancies.

edit:
Before I forget: also did the Ceaseless Discharge. The exploit doesn't seem to work anymore, so I had to do it "the hard way". By hiding behind a rock and smashing at any tentacle I can see.

The last bonfire I found in the area was in the last angkor-wat-like temple still in the lava area. It's behind an illusory wall. After that I didn't find anything.

I died 3 times at the bed of chaos, everytime to a collapsing floor. The arm attacks are only dangerous because they tend to push into the pit. But since the 'progress' is saved at this boss it's possible to just suicide run him. Just make sure you don't have too many souls/humanity that get lost.

Hah! The red thingies have disappeared! Apparently it was caused by a Gravelord Servant. I got a message that the Gravelord Servant was slain and one of those red dudes disappeared right before my eyes. That of course makes me wonder how a Gravelord Servant can invade my game while I'm hollow? I thought as long as you're dead nothing can come into your game?

I find some of the complaints about the upcoming pc version a bit silly. First there is this big campaign that we'd like to have a pc version and From Software actually listens (which is rare for online petitions anyway). Then details come out and more petitions start where people complain that it has the "wrong" kind of DRM (and for me all kind of DRM is "wrong" btw., hence I'm no big fan of steam).

I am happy that it comes to PC and even though From Software already admited they have problems with the port, I hope that the sheer processing power of a modern gaming PC will make a difference.

I was thrilled to hear about the PC release. I don't own any current generation consoles, and Dark Souls is one of the few games I feel like I'm missing out on. I'll be slightly more cautious now that I've heard about these possible problems, but I still have high hopes that I'll get to finally play this game soon.

Forget Astora's Sword. That's just a divine longsword with crappy scaling. The maxed out divine or occult longsword is better than that. You can take pretty much every weapon with a good faith scaling when divine/occult. Longsword is pretty decent, Iaito, Zweihänder, Claymore all work as well, as do various maces. My faith-char is currently using a Lucerne (which I call Lucy). Took me a bit to get used to her reach, but now Lucy absolutely rocks.

Some fun/useful miracles are heal (obviously), force, with which you can send regular sized enemies flying off narrow bridges or break guard, the sunlight spear plus variant and wrath of god for pure damage. Darkmoon blade or Sunlight blade don't work with divine weapons, so don't bother with them in a pure faith build.